universal daisy, in the trailing morning-glory and clambering vine, in the twinkling, gurgling, brawling brook, and sonorous river, in the day dreams of ambition among the corn-reapers of his native hills, in the shrill whistle of the mountain roebuck, leaping from rock and stream and lake with the music of baying hounds in hot pursuit, in the thrilling tones of wildwood birds glinting and echoing across the changing colors of shimmering rainbows, in the soaring lark and screaming eagle bathing their plumage in the ambient air, in the waving flight of the lone Albatross on tropic seas, in the toddle and laugh of innocent children chasing butterflies over field and lawn, in the flashing eyes, rippling curls, gliding motion and echoing songs of highland lassies, in the rounded and beautiful marble form of the Venus de Medici, in the lovelit grace and beauty of the Virgin Mother and child, in the stalwart and heroic form of the Apollo Belvidere, in the grand cathedral towers and spires pointing to heavenly hope, and the buzzing beatitudes of the circling sensuous Muses forever singing and soaring in the celestial fields of the ploughman poet! ROBERT BURNS BIRTH AND BOYHOOD DAYS Robert Burns was born in a straw-thatched clay cottage, by the banks of the river Doon, in Alloway parish, near the town of Ayr, Scotland, on the 25th of January, 1759, and died in a poverty room in Dumfries, on the 21st of July, 1796. He was the first child of William Burns and Agnes, his wife, poor, but respectable peasants, who endeavored to eke out a precarious living by gardening the sour and sandy soil of seven acres of rented land, that left them poorer and weaker at the close of the year than the beginning. William Burns came into Ayrshire from the highlands of Scotland, in search of work when he was nineteen years of age. His Celtic ancestors had lived in the highlands since the seventh century, under Catholic and Protestant reigns, but were ever infused with the love of liberty and the desire of equality under local and national laws. The Burns, or Burness family, were descended from the Fogerty family of the county of Tipperary, Ireland, one of the sons Cumascach-being the brother of Fogharthach, the 157th King of Erin in the year 664. The mountain and hill men of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, through the middle ages were cut up into family clans and tribes, and from their fastnesses of woods, rocks, lakes and rivers, dictated local government to barons, lords and kings. 15 These Celtic people spoke the guttural Gaelic language in its primitive tones, and even to this day the mountain Irish and Scotch understand each other. William Burns and his faithful wife, after the labors of the day, would teach Robert Bible lessons by continual repetition of faith and good works, until at the age of six their precocious son was sent to a small country pay school where he forged forward in learning, and surprised his teacher by his gift of language and memory. The peasantry of Scotland had very little chance for schooling, and the land-owners and puritanical ministers secretly winked at the continued literary ignorance of their "hewers of wood and drawers of water," that they, the selfelected of God, might keep their earthly and religious dupes under the harrow of body and soul control. "Robbie," in addition to the solemn teachings of his parents, and the elemental education received from his first teacher-Murdock, imbibed a vast store of superstitious lore from an old witch woman, who lived in the Burns cabin, worked around the cot and farm when she could, and in the gloaming and glare of tallow dips told ghost stories to young Burns, filling his mind from the age of seven to thirteen with fantastic yarns of flitting fairies, brownies, warlocks, spunkies, cantraps, giants, witches, dragons, enchanted castles and towers, that often sent the boy to bed with wonder, delight and consternation. We can well imagine that these romantic stories of the old woman in the long winter evenings stirred up the latent seed of poetry, philosophy and patriotism within the heart and soul of the boy, Burns, whose broad and deep mind reveled in the beauties of nature. At the age of thirteen, he was sent for a few months to the parish school of Dalrymple, where he learned the rules of He grammar and began the study of the French language. had an aching desire for knowledge and borrowed or bought all the extra books he could to read and study at home, even when plodding behind the plough or in the lonely garret hours with flickering light, when wind, rain or snow sifted through the chinks in his cabin. Burns scraped together quite a country household library, among the books being the Bible, Homer's Iliad, translated by Pope, Shakespeare's plays, Locke on the Human Understanding, the works of the poets Allen Ramsey and Robert Ferguson, the Spectator and Edinburgh Review, and collections of English and Scotch songs. The material events in the life of Burns with rough food and rough shelter on the farms of Mount Oliphant, Lochlea, in the parish of Tarbolton, Mossgiel and afterwards in Ellisland, on the river Nith, were really insignificant, and would never have been noticed were it not for the divine gift of poetry and philosophy that filled the body and mind of this unfortunate child of song. His practical, rural life was no more than any other bounding and beaming Scotch "Sandy," who delved among the unproductive acres of thistle and heather land, raising a few bushels of oats, barley, wheat, apples or vegetables to keep the wolf from the door, and spare time enough to court, dance and sing at cross-road ale houses, or spend a Sunday of solemn prayer and repentance at the Kirk, listening to nasal preachers picturing the fires of hell to unconverted sinners! The smouldering fires of poetry could not long be concealed from the life of Burns, and in his fifteenth year in the harvest time, a rustic maiden who was assisting the binders in the field of his father, inspired this first poem of the natural bard, which I translate for the delectation of the plain reader: HANDSOME NELL. O, once I loved a bonnie lass, And still I love her well, And while sweet virtue warms my breast I'll love my handsome Nell. Bright bonnie lasses I have seen And few without a flaw, But for a modest, graceful mien Her like I never saw. A bonnie lass, I will confess, She's not the lass for me. But Nelly's looks are bright and sweet, And what is best of all Her reputation is complete With form so fair and tall. She dresses ever clean and neat, And there is something in her gait A gaudy dress and gentle air 'Tis this in Nelly pleases me, 'Tis this enchants my soul, For absolutely in my breast She reigns without control! |